Fifty Tongans have been temporarily employed as fruit pickers in Australia, the first of more than 2,000 Pacific island farm laborers from Tonga, Vanuatu, Kiribati and Papua New Guinea.
Pacific trade union bodies and their Australian counterparts have expressed concern that the men are being paid casual rates, rather than being treated as full time employees as originally agreed on.
Tongan Crown Prince Tupouto’a Lavaka said problems might have come from different interpretations of the legal language used in the guest worker scheme.
“It’s a pilot scheme so we do expect some teething problems but in the longer run I think it should be worked out; there should be some overwatch by both sides,” he said.
He said there has probably been a misunderstanding which needs to be resolved.
“Especially of course things get lost over the translation of Tongan to English especially legalistic wordings and such so I’d expect both sides Tonga and Australia to make it a lot easier for the employers and employees and of course to fit in with the laws of Australia,” the prince said.
Meanwhile, Tonga has made a $64,000 donation to Victoria’s bushfire appeal.
Crown Prince Tupouto’a Lavaka handed the check to Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith.
The donation comes as the first of the Pacific island guest workers from Tonga arrived last week in northeastern Victoria.
The prince said it reflects the strong ties between the two countries.
“[It] highlights the very long historical links between Australians and Tongans, since several centuries have passed, and many of them of course started with the missionaries that came from Melbourne to Tonga and started education in Tonga,” he said.
